I make spaghetti almost as much as I make rice. I grew up eating rice almost every day. My family always cooked a pot of rice in a rice cooker to serve with poultry, seafood, and/or vegetables every night. Occasionally, my family would buy or make a noodle dish to serve for dinner in place of rice. I didn’t eat a lot of spaghetti growing up, but after moving away from home, I started making pasta and spaghetti all the time. The main reason was because I was a college student at the time and pasta was cheaper than rice.

I love making cola wings for a game day snack. Cola wings are the perfect sweet and salty, sticky and satisfying snack. It is also easy and quick to pull together to feed hungry people. I’ve made cola wings for Kevin’s weekly lunch prep and friends’ holiday gatherings. For game day on Saturday, I made some cola wings for Kevin and I to enjoy while cheering on our college’s football team. This is also one of the first dishes Kevin made when he was a student in college.

Other than vegetable cream cheese, scallion cream cheese is my spread of choice for bagels. Many years ago, back in my high school days, I would make the trek all the way to Bagel Boy in Sheepshead Bay just to get my hands on an onion bagel with scallion cream cheese. The onion bagel was my favorite. It just did not taste right slathered with regular cream cheese. Scallion cream cheese, on the other hand, seems to enhance the perfect onion flavor of the onion bagel.

This is my second attempt at the one skillet dinner. Several days ago, I made a one skillet chicken and rice dish using almost all the same ingredients as the ingredients in chicken noodle soup. It turned out great and both Kevin and I ate almost the entire skillet. Over the weekend, I tried another version of the one skillet dinner using chicken wings, a can of tomatoes, and vegetables. It turned out very well and was so easy to clean up.

The idea for these pancakes came about when I made pork dumplings a few days ago and had leftover ground pork filling. I didn’t want to waste the filling, so I added it into a mixture of flour and water and turned it into a savory type of pancake. The consistency and texture of the pancake is very similar to the seafood pancakes I’ve had at Korean restaurants in Manhattan’s k-town on 32nd street.

One of my favorite comfort foods back in college was minced pork rice. The first time I had this dish was at a bubble tea place in Ann Arbor. The little shop served bubble tea, appetizers, and snacks. It was located on my college campus and was a short walk away from the undergraduate library where I spent most of my days studying. Each bowl of minced pork rice was about five or six dollars and included minced pork, jasmine rice, and half a soy sauce egg.

The one skillet chicken and rice dish should really be called the one skillet, seared chicken, mixed vegetables, and seasoned rice dish, but the name is too long so I shortened it. I make this dish when I am too tired to cook and wash dishes (a.k.a. when I’m lazy). Instead of using multiple pots to prepare the chicken, vegetables, and rice separately, I like to cook all the ingredients in one skillet. The dish itself uses just one skillet to make, serves a bunch of people, and can pretty much be cooked in one vessel and served in the same vessel.